Apple’s latest Mac mini and Mac Studio are now available in the UAE, bringing the company’s newest desktop silicon to a lineup that stretches from a relatively accessible AED 3,799 machine to a workstation-class Mac Studio starting at AED 23,999.
The new Mac mini is available with either Apple’s M6 or M5 Pro chip. The M6 configuration combines a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU with Neural Accelerators integrated into every GPU core, alongside a dual 16-core Neural Engine. Apple claims up to four times faster AI performance and 40 percent faster CPU performance compared with the previous M4 Mac mini, while graphics performance can reach twice the previous generation in Apple’s testing.
Memory starts at 16GB and can reach 32GB on M6, with memory bandwidth increasing to 170GB/s. The M5 Pro version targets heavier creative and development workloads with up to an 18-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 64GB of unified memory and 307GB/s bandwidth. Both configurations add Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and 2.5Gb Ethernet, with 10Gb Ethernet available as an option.
Mac Studio occupies a very different performance bracket. The M5 Max version features an 18-core CPU, up to a 40-core GPU and as much as 128GB of unified memory. Moving to M5 Ultra raises that ceiling dramatically, offering up to a 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU and 512GB of unified memory with 1.2TB/s bandwidth.
That enormous memory capacity also makes Apple’s increasing focus on local AI more credible. The company is pitching Mac Studio as a machine capable of running large language models directly on-device, while Thunderbolt 5 with RDMA allows multiple Mac Studio systems to be clustered for distributed AI inference. Apple claims this can deliver up to three times the performance of a single machine in its testing.
Both desktops ship with macOS 27 Golden Gate, including the latest Liquid Glass refinements and broader performance and search improvements.
UAE pricing starts at AED 3,799 for the M6 Mac mini and AED 7,299 for M5 Pro. Mac Studio starts at AED 10,499 with M5 Max and AED 23,999 with M5 Ultra. Education pricing starts at AED 3,399 and AED 9,699 respectively. The 512GB Mac Studio configuration is scheduled to arrive in late October.
The specifications make Apple’s direction increasingly obvious: the Mac is no longer being sold purely on conventional CPU and GPU performance. Local AI capability is becoming just as central to the pitch — and Mac Studio’s 512GB memory option shows how seriously Apple is taking that shift.
